The next stable Fedora version 15, won't arrive until May next year, but it's always nice to learn that the distribution's developers are hard at work getting the many new features ready for public consumption. Rahul Sundaram updates us on the status of Btrfs, a file system that is expected to become the default in Fedora at some point: "One of the important changes not listed in the feature list for Fedora 15 is Btrfs in Fedora 15. Anaconda, the Fedora installer has marked Btrfs as a supported file system in Rawhide, the Fedora development branch a while back. Btrfs integration is a long process in Fedora spanning several releases and will eventually result in Btrfs becoming the default file system in a couple of releases. In Fedora 15, you don't need to pass any option - Btrfs will be one of the options by default, but do note that live images don't support anything other than the default of ext4 still. The future plan for Btrfs in Fedora has been detailed out by Josef Basik, Red Hat Btrfs file system developer. Josef is planning on adding Btrfs support into GRUB 2 as well but Grub 0.97, the legacy version."

so what does this mean? Grub2 will be used as Default or Legacy Grub? ( i think i answered my own question, Grub-Legacy will remain default ) .. this is Great News

For Fedora 15, GRUB Legacy is likely the default given noone is driving a effort to move to GRUB 2.

i noticed i think Kevin Fenzi? ( i think this was in Novembers Devel List about Fedora15 plans and features ) i think saying something about using Grub2 or trying to get Frub2 as default as its been in Fedora repo's for sometime and since there is a patch for BTRFS since 2009 for it? all i can gather or guess is that all Fedora would have to do is use ext4 as default boot filesystem in Grub2 which would allow people to use btrfs as there filesystem ? Lennart mentioned somehting about " syslinux " since it uhas BTFRS support

whats Ubuntu's default filesystem? i know some users are or having been using BTRFS in Grub2

The language here is pretty confusing and I am not sure I am parsing it right. GRUB legacy can be patched for Btrfs support, yes. The Btrfs developer in Fedora however prefers that Fedora switch over to GRUB 2 by default as part of the Btrfs transition. Since Btrfs won't be the default for Fedora 15 and will take a release or two more after that, we can wait.

Ubuntu uses Ext4 by default. No mainstream distribution has switched to using Btrfs by default yet.

The language here is pretty confusing and I am not sure I am parsing it right. GRUB legacy can be patched for Btrfs support, yes. The Btrfs developer in Fedora however prefers that Fedora switch over to GRUB 2 by default as part of the Btrfs transition. Since Btrfs won't be the default for Fedora 15 and will take a release or two more after that, we can wait.

Ubuntu uses Ext4 by default. No mainstream distribution has switched to using Btrfs by default yet.

yeah i read that also Rahul but i was confused with what the btrfs developer wanted. i saw it as he was saying " either fedora stick to grub-legacy or Move to Grub2 as default and use /boot ext4 as default" . i do believe BTRFS could be default in F17? ,

That seems quite obvious. GRUB 2 will have Btrfs support and Fedora could move to using that by default. Alternatively, Fedora could still move to Btrfs by default, keep using GRUB legacy and since that version of GRUB doesn't have btrfs support yet, keep using Ext4 for /boot. Yes, Btrfs could be default by Fedora 17.

I hope that Fedora quickly moves to Grub2. Grub2 is not yet finished, but Grub-legacy is now unsupported/unmaintained. It would be very nice for Fedora to upgrade to Grub2 add os-prober and be a nice system with which to dual-boot. Debian, Ubuntu, & I believe Linux Mint use Grub2. Btrfs will be a nice thing to have as well. OpenSUSE has not yet switched to Grub2 for the same ratiocination that Fedora holds; there will be a lot of work to nicely integrate the new version into what has come to be the expected effect of a Fedora-based installation. Fedora is supposed to be the cutting edge, but it is failing to implement something that Ubuntu has had for maybe two distributions (given that each is only 6 months apart it isn't an absurdly long period of time). Grub2 would require a tremendous work-load, but the effect of simplicity that it extends to users would be tremendous with multi-O.S. support and co-integration as G.N.U./Linux distributions have started to adopt the new version.

we'll have to wait an findout what Grub version they intend on using. but even if they dont use Grub2 by default you'll still be able to get it from the repo and use BTRFS in it. there feature deadline is 25/1/2011 so when redhat people get back to work from there holidays im sure we'll see more of a complete feature list from reading the Grub-devel mailing list 1.99 is much better than 1.98

again you can install 1.98 from fedora repo if your using F14 or 13

reason why Ubuntu and Debain have ben using it as its still experimental and lacked certain things fedora requires it to do. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Grub2 Grub2 might do all they need to implement it as default now with 1.99 being more feature complete, i dont know, Maybe Rahul could answer that

Grub legacy has been unmaintained upstream for a long time with major distributions cooking up their own patches for various extensions and sharing them between distributions. Even though GRUB2 is in development, it is unfinished, uses a completely different configuration and thus the situation is not ideal. Debian and Debian based distributions have been using a different patchset from Fedora and openSUSE and are not directly comparable. If someone is interested in making GRUB2 the default earlier, volunteer to do the work. It isn't going to happen by itself.

Grub legacy has been unmaintained upstream for a long time with major distributions cooking up their own patches for various extensions and sharing them between distributions. Even though GRUB2 is in development, it is unfinished, uses a completely different configuration and thus the situation is not ideal. Debian and Debian based distributions have been using a different patchset from Fedora and openSUSE and are not directly comparable. If someone is interested in making GRUB2 the default earlier, volunteer to do the work. It isn't going to happen by itself.

i didnt think it would, ( i thought you'd still be on Holidays? and wouldnt post here for awhile. Hope you had a Happy Christmas btw ) i was or am under the impression the only reason why Fedora didnt wanan use Grub2 as default was because of the New License Grub has an BTRFS lisence issues.

what else i wanted to ask you Rahul before i forget, has Fedora considered using Lilo-0.23? and does that have BTRFS support? reason why i ask is that i see on the frontpage is that it has its advantages over Grub and Grub2

also one more question, about the New Lilo, 0.23 isnt in Koji? whats the reason for that

I don't celebrate Christmas and in any case, regardless of holidays, I keep an eye on Fedora stuff. I don't think there is any licensing issues. Everything is GPLv2. There isn't any consideration of a shift back to lilo since the reasons for shifting to GRUB in the first place. Someone suggested using syslinux but I don't know how feasible that is. Lilo is not in the repository because noone is packaging it anymore. Apparent lack of interest in alternative bootloaders I suppose.

I don't celebrate Christmas and in any case, regardless of holidays, I keep an eye on Fedora stuff. I don't think there is any licensing issues. Everything is GPLv2. There isn't any consideration of a shift back to lilo since the reasons for shifting to GRUB in the first place. Someone suggested using syslinux but I don't know how feasible that is. Lilo is not in the repository because noone is packaging it anymore. Apparent lack of interest in alternative bootloaders I suppose.

i think Lennart suggested going to syslinux . as far as i know, Grub2 is GPLv3. i dont know a lot about Lilo, only that i used it back when i first started out using Linux and was told Grub was better than lilo. i just thought maybe someone might have had interest to package this new Lilo to test it out in Fedora

i saw screenshots of syslinux but isnt it just a fork or a renaming from grub-legacy?

GPLv2+ and GPLv3 are compatible. There aren't any licensing issues. syslinux has nothing to do with GRUB. It is a entirely different bootloader which Fedora uses only when you boot from the Live images. Post-installation uses GRUB.

If Grub version 1.99 or whatever version of Grub 2 is a part of a future Fedora release, for btrfs or just because, would it be possible to incorporate os-prober from Debian? I know that it was created as a part of Debian's installer, but I don't think that Ubuntu's installer shares much with Debian's and Ubuntu uses os-prober. It really gives a nice feature to the good ole Grand Unified Boot-Loader.